“Okay,” one of the state troopers said, “but that was all thirty years ago. What about now? You said it wasn’t him who did it this time, it was her, but I still don’t get it. You said it yourself. If he’d wanted to kill the people he knew, he had thirty years to do it. Why now? And the same goes for her.”
“It was her,” Gregor said. “Emma Kenyon Bligh will confirm that as soon as we can talk to her. But you have to realize that it must have been her, if only because Stu Kennedy is no longer in any shape to successfully commit murder and hide it. He could commit murder. He could smash somebody up or cause a head-on collision or do a dozen stupid, violent things that would end up with somebody dead, but he’s in no shape to murder somebody with a linoleum cutter and then get clean away so that he isn’t noticed and hide the evidence well enough so that we weren’t stumbling all over it as soon as the investigation started. Thirty years of substance abuse does tend to make someone less than competent at activities requiring mental agility and intellectual integration.”
“But that still doesn’t answer the question of why Peggy would want to kill Chris Inglerod Barr,” Kyle said.
“She didn’t,” Gregor told him. “She wanted to kill Liz Toliver.”
“But why?” Kyle said. “The woman’s been away from town for thirty years. It’s not like she was going to come back and get into everybody’s life. I mean, Christ, would you do that if you were her? The whole thing is completely nuts.”
“Think about it,” Gregor said. “Every single person we talked to from that group of people, Nancy Quayde, Emma Kenyon Bligh, Belinda what’s-her-name—”
“Hart,” Kyle said, “or Grantling. Take your pick.”
“Whoever. Each one of them told us the same thing, that Liz Toliver was writing a piece on the night she was locked into the outhouse.”
“But that’s not true, is it?” Bennis said. “I don’t think she’s writing a piece about anything at the moment. At least, she didn’t mention any work. Why would they think she was writing something about being locked in the outhouse?”
“Guilty consciences,” Kyle Borden said solemnly.
“I think that if you check with the remaining members of the group, you’ll find that Maris Coleman told them that that’s what Liz Toliver was doing. The information really couldn’t have come from anywhere else. The tabloid press isn’t big on reporting writing projects. And nobody else would have had the authority—I think I mean authoritativeness. You see what I’m getting at. Maris worked for Liz Toliver in New York. When Maris said that was what Liz Toliver was working on, the others naturally thought she knew what she was talking about.”
“Wait a minute,” Bennis said. “The car. Liz told Maris Coleman that she’d seen Peggy Smith Kennedy driving Maris’s rented car. Rats. I can’t remember how that went. We were in the middle of a terrific scene, and Liz was firing Maris and threatening to prosecute her over some checks and it was all because Liz had seen Peggy driving Maris’s rental car.”
“Thank you,” Gregor said. “Kyle will have to check that out, too, but that solves the problem of the car. I knew she had to have had access to one, in spite of the fact that her husband won’t allow her to drive, but I wasn’t sure exactly where she was going to get it.”
“Wait,” Kyle said. “You mean that first Maris went around telling all the rest of them that Betsy—Liz—I don’t know, that she was going to write some big article on the outhouse thing and, what? Tell who murdered Michael Houseman? Did she even know who murdered Michael Houseman?”
“She figured it out eventually, I think,” Bennis said.
“The point isn’t whether she knew,” Gregor said, “but whether the rest of them thought she knew.”
“And they did?” Kyle asked.
“I think Maris Coleman made sure they did,” Gregor said.
“Okay,” Kyle said. “So first Maris tells them Ms. Toliver is writing this thing on the outhouse incident and is, what, going to name names? Then she tells them that Ms. Toliver knows all about who killed Michael Houseman. Then she loans Peggy her car. What was she trying to do, get Ms. Toliver killed?”
“I don’t think so,” Gregor said. “I doubt if it ever occurred to her that anybody would resort to violence. She’d have known as well as anybody that Stu Kennedy was in no condition to cause that kind of trouble. And remember, Peggy Smith Kennedy didn’t kill Michael Houseman. As far as Maris Coleman knew, Peggy had done nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Stu Kennedy got violent. No, Maris Coleman didn’t want Liz Toliver dead—heaven forbid. Liz Toliver was her meal ticket. Maris Coleman wanted Liz Toliver embarrassed.”